Sofie to Korea

“Won’t you teach me Korean?” I never thought I’d hear these words from my husband, but this is exactly what he asked me a few weeks ago. After our first visit to Seoul last December we’re already planning on going again later this year, and we’re very seriously contemplating going to Korea for a longer research stay in 2016. I hope so much that this plan will work out!

Needless to say I was delighted by my husband’s request and immediately agreed. So now, every morning at 6:30 before getting ready for work, we study Korean together for 30 minutes. So far, I’m amazed at how fast he has acquired Hangeul, and he is gradually and steadily building his vocabulary. We usually listen to TTMIK podcasts (currently level 1) and work on constructing simple sentences. Even though this is very basic I feel that I too learn a lot just from teaching something that I learned myself not too long ago. My husband’s questions about verb endings and topic markers force me to think about things in a new way in order to explain them better. Great exercise! Though my husband was born in Korea he was raised here in Denmark speaking only Danish and English, so I find it amazing that he has now taken on the challenge of learning Korean. When I enquired him about the reason he answered: “Next time we go to Seoul, I wanna be the one who orders in the restaurant!” And of course I’ll let him. ^^